In an open letter Japanese historians say the government of Japan was right to challenge a textbook's claims about the role of "comfort women" in WW 2

Generally speaking, it is better that governments do not intervene in the writing of history textbooks. However, if clear factual mistakes are found in textbooks, and if those mistakes have extremely negative effects on the dignity of a given country and its nationals, then it is natural that such a country’s government request revisions of the errors. We think McGraw-Hill’s textbook is just such a case. In their March 17, 2015, booklet “Requesting Corrections of Factual Errors in McGraw-Hill Textbook,” 19 Japanese historians identified 8 apparent factual errors within 26 lines in merely 2 paragraphs concerning the issue of comfort women, and then requested that the textbook’s publisher, McGraw-Hill, correct these errors. If the US government was in the same situation, it presumably would have taken issue with the publisher and author of such an error-laden textbook, in an incomparably fiercer manner.

The title of the statement of the 20 American historians (Perspectives, March 2015) is “Standing with Historians of Japan.” However, even Professor Yoshiaki Yoshimi, whom the 20 American historians hold in high regard in their statement, could identify multiple factual errors in the McGraw-Hill textbook, if he were asked to do so. We are afraid that, in point of fact, the 20 American historians would never be able to find a single Japanese academician with whom they could stand. It would be as if they were standing with Japanese ghosts.

Both the author of the McGraw-Hill textbook and the authors and co-signers of the 20 American historians’ statement never mentioned the Interagency Working Group (IWG) report of April 2007, which stated that they could not find any documentation to show that the Japanese government committed war crimes with respect to the comfort women during the Second World War. This report was the result of very thorough research by the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). NARA identified 142,000 pages of Japanese-related classified documents held by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), CIA, FBI, US Army Counterintelligence Corps (CIC), and others. This research task took 7 years and cost $30 million. If the author of the McGraw-Hill textbook and the 20 American historians did not know about the IWG report, then they should be censured for performing an inadequate study; if they did know about the IWG report but ignored it, then their impartiality as academics should be seriously questioned.

In the McGraw-Hill textbook, there are phrases such as “the army presented the women to the troops as a gift from the Emperor” and “At the end of the war, soldiers massacred large numbers of comfort women to cover up the operation.” These accounts are completely without supporting historical evidence. Writers of fiction have license to create alternative realities using their imaginations, but history textbooks written by serious scholars should contain nothing but demonstrable truths. Furthermore, we have to say that the credibility of the McGraw-Hill textbook as a whole should be seriously questioned as 8 errors of fact in only 26 lines, mentioned earlier, on the comfort women were found in the textbook. Given how many mistakes were in just these two paragraphs, one would seriously wonder about the quality of the other parts of the textbook. This is a problem that affects the prestige of American historians as a whole. American historians need to make an effort to check the appropriateness of American history textbooks in America, across the board, rather than point fingers at the Japanese government when it tries to call attention to these errors of fact. The efforts of American historians will determine whether or not future generations of Americans will have the correct historical view, which will be extremely important for the United States as well as for the rest of the world.